Snail Mail

I'm thinking of mailing addresses today, because I wrote new ones in my address book for my two sons. The pages in that category have many crossed out addresses, because of the numerous moves they have made since being in college. That also goes for my daughter in Seattle. I remember when CB and I moved a lot, even after getting married, and so we had various addresses. I always assumed my "permanent" address or connection would be that of my parents' in Bellingham, WA, but they died and so that address is not a way to reach me anymore.

I wonder how many people actually have paper address books now. Perhaps snail mail is a thing of the past and the way to stay connected is through e-mail addresses. The internet is much faster than snail mail, but the receiving of a paper envelope, holding it, seeing the handwriting, and opening it is a much more sensuous process than looking at an e-mail. Identifying someone's handwriting can bring their presence to mind vividly--that's what still happens to me when I happen to see either of my parents' handwriting on something long-forgotten.

I love receiving "real" letters and cards that I find in my mailbox attached to my house. However, I notice that both my husband CB and son BJ will leave a handwritten envelope lying around without opening it for days. They don't seem to value handwritten items as I do.

Maybe that's because I grew up moving around in the 1950's and 1960's as my dad was transferred to different military bases. It was cost prohibitive then to make long distance phone calls, and so letter writing was the way to stay in touch with friends and family. I remember my dad would sit at his black typewriter every Sunday and type a letter to his mother. After my mother died, I found a notebook of the letters that she had written home during WWII to her parents that her mother had saved. (Both my parents were Marines in WWII)

I guess I won't change and will continue to mail cards and letters to people, so I need my paper address book! (In fact, that's what I wrote about in a long ago standardized test for a TX teaching certificate--The question was what would I miss the most if I lost it, and I wrote about my address book!)